G-400 problems with Bus Mastering

[Joe Potter]

From the beginning I've had seemingly random and hard lock ups with my computer. The problem begins with a scrambled screen which looks like colored bars and the cursor is usually still moving with a black box next to it. After about 2 months of trying different things, and watching this MURC forum for tips, I've isolated the problem to Bus Mastering. With Bus Mastering enabled 9 times out of 10 the system locks when I try to use the 3D Flying Objects screen saver with the windows logo. There are many other 3D programs that only work with Bus Mastering but Bus Mastering causes the lockups after only a few minutes of use. This is very discouraging. I was communicating with Matrox tech help for a while but I think they gave up. My system is an Athlon500, MS-6167 mainboard, Micron pc100 memory 128mb w/ ecc, Matrox G-400, 3com FAX modem 56k, Soundblaster AWE64 value,
Quantum Fireball ka ide harddrive. Any advise or reports of similar problems would be appreciated. Maybe the G-400 is just incompatible with this setup?

[paulcs]

I can almost guarantee that someone on the forum would have asked you to post a list of your IRQ's, if I didn't do it first, as they read them like tea leaves. I assume, since you have been monitoring the board, that you know know about the G400's aversion with sharing with anything but IRQ Holder for PCI Steering.

They'll want to know what your AGP aperture size is as well. Try increasing it to 256 MB.

If worse comes to worse, the "Wizard of Athlon" hangs out here, and he has a particular fondness for your motherboard.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Kruzin]

To me, this sounds like a heat issue.
Have you tried running with the cover off the case, or adding extra cooling?

[Sammie]

I've been having the same problem, with the system completely hanging (the atx power button no longer works, I need to turn off the power supply to shut down the system) with weird coloured striped on the monitor in a zebra style on the top (or all over) of the screen. It happens sometimes when switching resolutions, ie when booting up and the windows desktop is supposed to appear, or when booting up a game (half life) and it switches to another res. I haven't even begun to understand the problem since I changed quite a few items all at once:
new mobo (asus K7M with 300W power supply)
new CPU Athlon 500Mhz
new G400 32Mb DH
new HD 27.3 Gb 72000rpm IBM
new DVD-Rom (AOpen 9632)
new SB live 1024
CDRW (HP 8210i)
SCSI scanner
external USR sportster flash modem

I made sure that the AGP ports IRQ is NOT SHARED with any other slot, so no probs there.
That and the fact I can't get the damned G400 running at AGPx2 are the only (for now minor) probs.

..Sammie.

[RAB]

Merchant2112 pointed out a few days ago that the MSI board has a known bug. If you are using a USB mouse, WIN98 will crash on start up. Either use a PS2 mouse or just plug one into the PS2 port to fix the problem

If this is not your case, I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions other than looking at your IRQ tea leaves.

RAB

[VidMadMan]

I don't know if this makes you feel any better, but I have the exact same problems. The only way to get around it that I know of is to reinstall Windows and DO NOT install any of your motherboard software, such as the AMD 751 AGP miniport and busmastering. Install your graphics card drivers (I can't get 5.30 to work so try using the old ones that came with the G400) and everything should work fine - at least in DirectX. I have DX 7 installed and I play Half Life and Wheel of Time, both in Direct3D mode. I can't get OpenGL to work with or without TurboGL and with or without the new drivers. 2D and Dualhead works fine. Curiously, Bus mastering used to work for the first few weeks that I had this motherboard.

system specs:
FIC SD11
Athlon 500 with dual fan+heatsink
96 MB PC100 RAM
9.1 GB Quantum Fireball KA
Matrox G400 32 MB DH
USB intellimouse
PS/2 keyboard
Pioneer 6x DVD
Smart and Friendly CD Speedwriter Plus
PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 300ATX P/S
In-Win 500A Case

[Stranger]

What Bios version you are using for the G400.
The PD5.30 Driver needs Bios version 1.5 - 22
to run corect.
Try to run PD5.13 and your problems should be gone.
Have you seen these screen flickering in Games?
Then you try to using MGA-Tweak and SD/SGRam Optimization with following Settings 3 , 1 , 3 , 8 , 3 , 1 , Fast , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1.4 , 1.4 .
These Settings reduce the Flickering to a minimum.
I hope these Infos help you.

Sorry for my bad English!!!

Mfg
Stranger

[merchant2112]

i have the exact same problem. 5.3 is totaly unstable with my board. open gl refuses to work if i try it halflife and the comp locks within 2 to 5 min of play (if im lucky sooner if im not) ded seems a little more stable as long as i force 1xagp but it still locks from time to time. uninstalling 5.3 and going to 5.25 seems to help. oipen gl lasts longer and d3d is reall stable. am abble to enjoy halflife for long periods of time (cstrike) with out lock ups as long as i force 1xagp . but it will still lock up from time to time. have tryed reloading windows with and with out amd agp driver one from thier site and the version before witch i have on cd from msi with out driver at all seems the most stable with 5.3 drivers but it still locks from time to time its anoying but dose not happen that often as long as i dont use opengl. (oh i just got the non beta 1.4 msi 6167 bios from slota.com heres to hopeing it fixes something. (how would i go about turning off agp sidebanding i haven tgot a clue. or switchinfg the card to dime agp tranfers or is it dma that is more stable i get confused. i think it is a agp transfer problem not bus mastering. but i could be wrong (oh ya its a 50/50 shot at weather my power button still works some times it dose sometimes it don't
no irqs shareing, no cd in my new dvd drive nolonger gives me the bsod. usb mouse fixed so it boots up no problem. system boots in under 1min even with my zip drive turned on so that problem is corected. this is the only hickup i have left. and its more anoying than any thing else. im sure we will be able to work this bug out with a patch or maybe in the next driver release. (hey maybe its a dx7 thing i have that installed?) but thenn why would open gl crash it dosn't call on dx7 dose it? i know the turbogl is a wraper of sorts but i mean opengl. oh and do i have to tell halflife to use the turbo gl driver and if so dosn't the opengl32.dll that the turbo gl manager makes belong in the gldriver folder where the 3dfxminigl driver sits?????

------------------
my system has arived. all together and if i new about the usb bug in 98 with this board i would have been fiished a lot sooner.

msi 6167 mobo k7 500 wk41 now at 650.(not overclocked its a real 650 they underclcoked.) 256 meg ram ,addtronics case w 250watt sp power supply, matrox g400, maxtor diammax 2500+ 10gig hd,10x aopen slot dvd, 3com 10/100 nic and 56k ext modem, xitel p storm sound card. lots of controlers joystick throttle rudder raceing wheel, and 19in monitor, usb logitech mouse.

i found the fix for the mouse hang problem.

[Joe Potter]

Thanks for all the advice folks. As I said, I've tried many different things and so far disabling Bus Mastering keeps the system stable for hours on end, no problems at all. I'm not sharing any IRQ's, The G-400 is on IRQ 9. The AGP apperture setting is 128mb. I've even run the computer with the case open and a fan pointed straight at the card, on high. I have a Turbo Cool 300atx power supply. I've forced AGP 1x (this caused the computer to lock hard on startup everytime). I'd like to think there's something physically wrong with this card but because so many people are having the same problem I tend to believe it's a driver problem. I like the card very much when it works. I've even played Quake2 In OpenGL mode for hours and experienced extremely smooth game play. This aggravation though isn't worth it any more. I'm spending far too much time making adjustments and crashing (usually while scrolling with just the desktop showing) the card that has never worked right. Sorry but I tried and I'm ready to cash it in. I borrowed an EON Tronics Picasso 8mb AGP and it worked fine. I'd like a few bells and whistles though so maybe a TNT2 based card is in order. Thanks again for the response.

[merchant2112]

joe i think the problem is most definatly adriver issue. i never had this kind of a problem with this video card on my bh6 system. so i know my card is not bad. my problem is not as bad as yours. have you tryed disableing or shuting down all programs in the backgrouond except explorer and systray ? and then running your game.